MIT engineers create an energy-storing supercapacitor from ancient materials
news.mit.edu
MIT engineers created a carbon-cement supercapacitor that can store large amounts of energy. Made of just cement, water, and carbon black, the device could form the basis for inexpensive systems that store intermittently renewable energy, such as solar or wind energy.

A 2023 study at MIT made this discovery, which could be a boon for storing electricity.

The team calculated that a block of nanocarbon-black-doped concrete that is 45 cubic meters (or yards) in size — equivalent to a cube about 3.5 meters across — would have enough capacity to store about 10 kilowatt-hours of energy, which is considered the average daily electricity usage for a household.

3.5 cubic meters of material ought to be enough to make quite a comfy house

There is a tradeoff between the storage capacity of the material and its structural strength, they found. By adding more carbon black, the resulting supercapacitor can store more energy, but the concrete is slightly weaker, and this could be useful for applications where the concrete is not playing a structural role or where the full strength-potential of concrete is not required.

They talk about making roads with the material, but I suspect electrical posts (utility poles) could also be made of this, which would certainly last much longer than roads and be cheaper to maintain and fix

  • SoleInvictus@lemmy.blahaj.zone
    7·
    11 hours ago

    Failed electrical engineering major here - it turned out I was built to be a scientist, not an engineer, but it took a year of EE classes to figure that out.

    Regarding energy storage, capacitors aren’t much different than batteries, but they can charge/discharge faster, have lower energy density (units of stored energy per units mass), and self-discharge faster, hence why they aren’t used in place of batteries. For something where weight and volume aren’t an issue and with no need for long-term storage, like a solar-equipped house, a huge cap would be a great option. I’m trying to figure out how to build one of what’s described it the article now.

    The rate at which a capacitor discharges varies just like a battery, proportional to the resistance of the circuit. The reason most folks associate capacitors with “shorted terminals go boom” is the maximum rate of discharge on a capacitor is much higher than a battery, plus some capacitors operate at a much higher voltage than is practical for a battery, increasing the likelihood of generating a small arc. Shorting the terminals with a conductor makes a low resistance circuit so it just dumps its charge, whereas a battery would max out at a much lower rate, typically making a toasty wire versus a vaporized or melted wire.